


I Cannot Play Pretend

by mggislife2789



Category: Criminal Minds, Spencer Reid - Fandom
Genre: Cheating, Childhood Friends, Emotional Affair, F/M, Reader-Insert
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-31
Updated: 2017-07-31
Packaged: 2018-12-09 11:29:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,748
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11668236
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mggislife2789/pseuds/mggislife2789
Summary: Song fic with the Speeding Cars by Walking on Cars.Disclaimer: I don't own any of these characters or their original stories. This is only for fun. It's where my brain goes after the credits roll. No copyright intended. Better safe than sorry. ;)





	I Cannot Play Pretend

So if I stand in front of a speeding car  
Would you tell me who you are, what you like?  
What’s on your mind, if I’d get it right?  
How I love that no one knows  
And these secrets all that we’ve got so far  
The demons in the dark, lie again  
Play pretends like it never ends  
This way no one has to know

It was wrong. He knew it was wrong. But he couldn’t stop himself. Y/N had been his childhood best friend. They’d lost touch and now she was here again. How was he supposed to let her go? He couldn’t; he knew it couldn’t, despite how wrong it was for him to have lingering feelings for his childhood friend when he was in a relationship.

S: How are you this morning?

Y/N: Good, love. How are you?

S: I’m good, just…this is wrong.

Y/N: I know. But I don’t know how to stop. I’ve missed you all these years.

S: I’ve missed you too. So much. But we’re both with someone else. Shouldn’t we choose what we want and either remain friends or not? I just feel so awful. Alana isn’t a bad person. I just don’t love her.

Y/N: It’s the same with Brian. He’s sweet, but he’s not you.

His heart jumped happily in his chest at her words. But he was immediately brought down by that exact happiness.

This had been how their conversations had been going for weeks, playing around the idea of lost love and a mutual future, but their desires to not hurt the ones they were dating kept them from making the decisions they knew they needed to make.

Neither Brian nor Alana knew that there was something going on, and there was definitely something, but Spencer couldn’t figure out which was worse, physically cheating or emotionally cheating, because he was definitely doing the latter, and there were no brakes to stop him.

Even the half smile would have slowed down the time  
If I could call you half mine  
Maybe this is the safest way to go  
We’re singing  
Heya heya heya heya  
This is the safest way to go nobody gets hurt  
We’re singing  
Heya heya heya heya  
You go back to him and then I’ll go back to her

Over and over again, Spencer and Y/N contemplated whether or not to keep their affair quiet and exactly how it was, a fantasy to escape into rather than a reality, whether to end their affair completely, and despite history cut off ties, but none of it seemed right. Every possible outcome had someone getting hurt, and it was the last thing they both wanted. 

S: Remember that time on the playground when we were kids? When Stella Beecher was getting made fun of for her glasses and you stepped in between her and the bullies? That was it. You’d stuck up for me before, but I’d always assumed it was because we were friends, but that day I saw you for the person you were - the kindest person I’d ever known, and still have ever known honestly. 

The night before, while Alana and Brian were both asleep, Y/N had asked when he’d fallen for her, because she was pretty sure loving him, in one degree or another, was all she’d ever known. Besides her family, Spencer was the only person in the world she’d ever had that deep of a connection with. 

Y/N woke up to the message, which she read with a slight blush and smile, immediately wiping it away when she stared at the empty space beside her in bed. She really did care for Brian; he was a good guy, but there was something inside her telling her that if she didn’t take a chance on happiness with Spencer, she would regret it for the rest of her life.

So if I stand in front of a speeding car  
Would you give your little heart?  
Say the word?  
Due to just me and you  
This way everyone will know

Y/N: Spence, it’s been six months of this. I can’t do this to Brian anymore. I don’t love him anymore, but he doesn’t deserve this.

S: I know. I know. I just don’t know what to do.

Since a month or so after they’d reconnected this is how the conversation had gone, but she truly couldn’t keep going like this. On top of it hurting her own heart, it would eventually blow up in Brian’s face and that wasn’t fair to him. 

Y/N: I do. I broke up with Brian last night. I told him that I was in love with someone else. He was hurt, obviously, but he gave me a hug and wished me the best. You need to decide now - whether you want to come clean with Alana or not. Either way, I will no longer be with Brian. But if you can’t break things off with Alana…I can’t do this anymore…I love you, Spence.

When he stared down at the message, his heart nearly stopped. She had made a decision; she wanted him, but he didn’t know what to do. The idea of hurting Alana made his heart ache. 

S: I need a little time. Will you give me time?

Y/N: Yes. But I won’t wait forever Spence. 

S: I wouldn’t expect you to.

After that conversation, nearly two weeks went by with very little interaction between them. Every time he looked at the phone, it was with longing, everything in him screaming to run out of his apartment and toward hers. And when he glanced across the table or to his side in bed, the guilt rose and threatened to swallow him home. What he really wanted? What he really wanted was for he and Y/N to have reconnected at a time when they were both single. But as he combed through the thoughts in his mind, he realized that what he never wished was for them not to have reconnected. He’d missed her so much. When Alana came home today, he would. He had to. He had to try. Or he’d hate himself forever.

“Alana,” he said softly as she walked through the door. “Can I talk to you?”

She nodded, completely unaware of what he was about to say. “Sure.”

“I can’t be with you anymore,” he said. His lip quivered as he spoke, the look in her eyes almost enough to drop him to the floor on the spot.

“Why not?”

Spencer took a deep breath and formed the words he’d been fearing to speak for the last six and a half months. “I’m in love with someone else.”

“You’ve been cheating on me?” She asked angrily, her eyes welling over with tears at the sudden realization. 

“Emotionally yes,” he admitted. “I’ve never slept with her. But I am in love with her.”

“I don’t know which one is worse,” she said after a few minutes. 

Spencer looked down at the ground and started to cry. He’d been thinking the same for so long. Neither one was better than the other; it was just different. “I’m so sorry, Alana,” he said. “You are a wonderful woman, but I can’t deny how I feel anymore.”

“I understand.” She turned into the kitchen and grabbed a glass of water before looking around the apartment, her eyes resting on item after item that belonged to Spencer and not her. “I’ll start packing up your things. Do you mind staying in a hotel for a few days? I can’t have you here. It’s too hard.”

“Of course,” he replied. “I’ll leave now. Alana…I’m sorry.”

Picking up his messenger bag and a few necessities he’d need for the next few days, he walked out, closing the door behind him and feeling a peace come over him. Right now, he hated himself for the look in Alana’s eyes - knowing he’d put in there. But Y/N was waiting and he had to give it a chance.

Advertise my secret  
I don’t really need it  
I know you can feel this  
So advertise my secret  
I don’t really need it  
I know you can feel this  
So advertise my  
Advertise my secret

For the next few days, Spencer tried calling Y/N to no avail. Each time her phone rang, it went to voicemail, and every time it did, he wondered whether or not he’d waited too long. It was only after another few days, about a week after he’d broken it off with Alana, that he passed an intersection Y/N frequented and noted a piece of debris in the middle of the street. It belonged to a car that looked very much like hers, so he asked around the local shops if they knew what had happened. That’s when he heard. “There was a head-on collision here the other night,” the barista said. “The drunk driver walked away, but the other driver went to the hospital.”

“Do you know who they were? Was it a woman?” he asked.

When the barista nodded, Spencer pulled out his own phone and showed her a picture. “That’s her.”

“Where did they take her?”

The barista had barely gotten the words out of her mouth when Spencer sprinted in her direction, hoping that he wasn’t too late.

—–

“My name is Spencer Reid. I’m here for Y/N Y/L/N. Is she here? Is she okay?” The panic inside him shook his voice. The nurse could barely understand him, but once she had, she led him to her room. 

“She was very lucky. She’s got a lot of broken bones. She had some internal bleeding, but she’ll eventually walk out of her fully recovered. I’ll leave you two for a moment.”

As the nurse departed, the tears fell from his eyes and onto his hands as he stretched them out to her. She was asleep, so he sat at her side and hoped she’d wake up soon.

—–

“Spencer, is that you?” she asked. The clock said it was nearly 3 AM. 

His head popped up and he wiped the sleep from his eyes. “You’re alive. I was petrified. I…I broke it off with Alana.”

Without another word, he curled himself into her and they both fell asleep once more. Neither could know what the future would bring, but at least now they knew a mutual future was possible.


End file.
